Reading

More God. Not More About God.

When I hear people talk about what is wrong with organized religion, or why their mainline churches are failing, I hear about bad music, inept clergy, mean congregations, and preoccupation with institutional maintenance. I almost never hear about the intellectualization of faith, which strikes me as a far greater danger than anything else on the [...]

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Deep Hope

Without the empty tomb, resurrection theology reduces to a generalized capacity for goodness somehow to outlast and overcome evil. Such a resurrection hope is only as powerful as the latest experience one may have had with goodness hanging on against such evil. In the grand sweep of human history, there is too much evidence to [...]

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Become Yourself

Thomas Merton was speaking to a group of his novices: “There is only one thing for anybody to become in life. There’s no point in becoming spiritual – the whole thing is a waste of time.  What you came here for is to become yourself, to discover your complete identity to be you.  But the [...]

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Any Kindle (or Nook) Readers Out There?

I’m curious.  Anyone made the move to reading primarily or exclusively on an e-reader?  I was given a Kindle for Christmas and I’m s…l…o…w…l…y transitioning to reading on it!  On some tech things I’m an early adopter, but on this, I’ve been slow to make the jump.  I’m still up in the air on reading [...]

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Ortberg on the Image of God

My wife asked me recently why all I ever do is quote other people on my blog?!  I guess that’s where I’m at these days … I read something intriguing or provocative and want to share it, but I’m not really constructive with my own thoughts.  Maybe that will come around again, but until then, [...]

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Incarnation: The Intersection of Spiritual and Physical

If the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, that is, if the Word of God came out of the birth canal of a woman’s body, grew, ate, went to the bathroom, sometimes bathed, struggled against demons, sweated, wept, exulted, transfigured, was physically violated and rotted away in a tomb just before being [...]

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Thomas Merton on Seeing the Core of Our Reality

I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are….There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. It was [...]

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The Saving Life of Christ

There is something which makes Christianity more than a religion, more than an ethic, and more than the idle dream of the sentimental idealist.  It is this something which makes it relevant to each one of us right now as a contemporary experience.  It is the fact that Christ Himself is the very life content [...]

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